Other related coverage

THE female nude, always a popular artistic subject, dominated
this year's Moran Prizes, with two naked self-portraits winning the
main awards.

At the State Library of NSW yesterday the Sydney artist Fiona
Lowry won the $100,000 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize for her
painting What I Assume You Shall Assume.

The work, Lowry's first entry in a major art competition, shows
the artist standing naked in the Belanglo State Forest, the site of
the infamous backpacker murders. She said her painting explored the
sometimes strange and malevolent quality of the Australian
bush.

"My work tends to depict people doing things that are slightly
ambiguous in the landscape, but this is the first time I've turned
around to face the viewer. I'm the figure in it because it's
easiest to use myself."

Lowry's unusual aerosol technique caught the attention of the
judges, Doug Hall, the former director of the Queensland Art
Gallery, and Ben Quilty, a Sydney artist. She used an air brush to
spray a fine mist of red and orange paint onto the canvas.

"The aerosol work - in graffiti and on spray-painted cars - is
usually all about young male angst," Quilty said.

"To use that technique to show the fragility and tension of her
own body - it makes an amazingly brave portrait."

The freelance photographer Belinda Mason won the $50,000 first
prize in the open section, for Four Generations. To create
the winning work she digitally merged four nude photographs, of
herself, her grandmother, mother and son.

"Really, it's a very personal and private image," Mason said.
"It took a lot of courage to enter it in such a public competition.
It's a reflection of the physical bond, the genetic bond and the
emotional bond between my family."

Mason's mother was nervous about seeing the work on public
display, but her 101-year-old grandmother was enthusiastic. "She
was so cool," Mason said. "She said, 'I can't believe I finally get
to be a Playboy pin-up'."

The judge, the photographer North Sullivan, chose Mason's work
from more than 3000 entries.

In the schools division, Alex Case won the $20,000 years 11 and
12 prize for his photograph Where You've Been Hiding. The
years 9 and 10 prize went to Larissa Enright and Alden Leong won
the years 7 and 8 prize for Pollution, an image of a student
in front of a car park. All school-aged winners will share the
prizemoney with their schools.